


"Your mouth was on fire and bone sore"

by lazyroughdrafts



Series: Beast in the Headlights [3]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: AU, Baked Goods, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyroughdrafts/pseuds/lazyroughdrafts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The merest sliver of insight into the way these two work. But of course they shouldn't work. Hence this universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Your mouth was on fire and bone sore"

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the throes of aggressive writer's block. Also, I want cake.
> 
> [Anything in brackets is from the opera Boris Godunov]

[Are you still grieving for your lost lover]

 

Modest Averin was named for the eponymous composer. He was in fact a patron of the arts and almost inordinately fond of Boris Godunov. The latter being an insight into the man that had earned a significant eye roll from Moriarty. A small man with thinning mousy blond hair, he made up with quiet menace what he lacked in physical stature. He went unnoticed until his presence invariably filled a room. Unnoticed to most. A category that most definitely did not include Moriarty.

She was wary from the start and had been treading lightly. His family ties to Leonid and Nikolai Durov alone were cause to give him and his operations a wide berth. But then Mariya had gone missing. And Sherlock wouldn't stop. He didn't stop. Not until Joan went missing.

 

 [A ringing of bells]

 

Not until Moriarty paid him a visit in the slowing hum of 3:45AM.

 

She had been all daggers and he had been wild-eyed with grief. For Mariya or Joan, she couldn't tell. Maybe both the given reality and the anticipation of more, was the more likely answer.

 

"Stop looking into Averin. You're going to get her killed."

"That's rich coming from you." Sherlock would have spat the words had he not sounded so defeated.

He didn't need to ask which _her_ she was referring to, or how she knew or why she was there in the lost hour between night and day. He didn't have to ask why she should care, why _she_ who has spilled so much blood should care.

 

"Sherlock." His name uttered so quietly drew him to attention from the sleep-deprived haze of humiliation and rage. "You will not pursue Averin any further. Do you understand me?"

Wordless but defiant, something like derision overtook his features.

"Since I seem to have overestimated your intellectual prowess, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Joan, your girlfriend's as good as dead. Do you understand me now?"

He believed her. Startled by the sweeping change. This time ice in her voice. This time fire in her eyes. He had believed her.

 

 

...........

 Three months ago a certain thaw had settled. How could it not? Her lips had burned.

 

"Our mutual friend is lovelorn I hear. Do tell." Jamie had teased waylaying Watson on her way back from her mother's. Not without simultaneously offering a red velvet cupcake from Two Little Red Hens.

 

Joan had peered at her quizzically but accepted the offering without further commentary. Clearly Moriarty was paying attention to the details, scrutiny that was equal parts flattering and frightening.

 

Seemingly oblivious to the implications, Joan hummed into the first bite. "Perfect." 

They easily fell into step with each other until the pedestrian traffic swarmed and bulged against them. Jamie occasionally palmed Joan's back, or momentarily curled her fingers round her waist as they jostled and squeezed through a crowd of raucous French teenagers on their school trip.

"Perfection." Jamie agreed as she reached over to flick a crumb that had fallen on her white Peter Pan collar; Joan sighed contentedly after her second bite.

 

A speeding car ran a red light light as they were about to cross. With alarmingly quick reflexes Jamie snapped her arm out and held Joan back. Startled, Joan dropped the cupcake before she could take her third bite. Her eyes grew wide for a split second as she thanked her on autopilot.

 

Jamie thought she saw the smallest flicker of disappointment for the fallen swirl of destroyed dark red crumb and icing, "I'll get you a whole box."

Watson shook her head and laughed, "It's really okay I'm not five."

 

"Well then, I believe you were about to dish the gossip before I saved you from certain death."

 

Joan huffed.

 

"Look, I'm not discussing Sherlock's love life with you. But I won't pretend it's not disturbing." To which Jamie arched her brow seeking further elucidation.

 

"So you really have just heard. You should probably see for yourself." Jamie's brow had arched suggestively at that.

 

Joan had rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant." Her brows furrowed ever so slightly, "She looks like you."

She paused briefly to examine Jamie's countenance as if to verify her own assertion. She must have found her statement lacking in precision because she qualified it.

"She looks like Irene."

 

Watson continued to examine that face and in doing so her own features softened considerably. They softened enough that Jamie discerned concern and just a trace of affection in those lines.

 

Her lips had burned hadn't they?

 

The next morning a box of two dozen red velvet cupcakes were delivered to the brownstone.

 

..........

 When Moriarty did _see_ , what she saw was that Sherlock had an apparent knack for falling hopelessly for dangerous women. And Mariya Averina was certainly dangerous.

...........

 

Joan's wrist had been splinted. Joan had been buried in an oversized sweater, pottering about the house in that oversized sweater. Why the sight of her just so should tug at Moriarty's heartstrings was a bigger mystery than the woman herself, or perhaps part and parcel of the brilliant enigma that was Dr. Watson.

 

She saw eyes that had seen beyond the theater of good and evil. And what did they see when they looked into hers now?

...........

Seven months ago.

 

[Not in vain has God made me witness]

 

The problem isn't that you're one of the bad guys." She had responded when pushed. "It's that you don't care."

"That dualist trap does none of us any favors. It doesn't even mean anything. Christ Jamie, is that what you want to hear? That you're a bad guy. That you're evil? You're so much worse than that. You're so much worse because you really don't give a damn do you?"

 

...........

 

It clawed and clawed at Moriarty's insides. The bare facts. The drowning. _The blueing lips._ The shrapnel. _The torn skin._ The gunshot wounds. _The blood._

 

A good woman who had died once, twice, three times.

 

Dead. Dead. Dead.

 

 

 ["Like the beautiful sun in the sky, glory"]

**Author's Note:**

> Still don't own anything related to Elementary and never will.
> 
> Titles on this series are all from Little Red Lung song, 'Fangs'


End file.
